Rebekkah Saeed (left) and Jacob Saeed (right).
In a recent Youtube video, Rebekkah, 7, and Jacob, 6, Abedini asked President Obama to help bring their father, Pastor Saeed Abedini, home from imprisonment in Iran, expressing how much they miss him.
“I don’t want to miss another birthday without him,” said Rebekkah.
Jacob said, “I don’t want him to miss another birthday, or Christmas, or Father’s day.”
“Why does our Daddy need to be in prison for loving Jesus?” Rebekkah asked in the video.
“My heart cries because it misses Daddy,” Jacob said, and he said he knows it because he feels it.
Pastor Saeed Abedini, who is a U.S. citizen, has been imprisoned in Iran for his Christian faith since 2012, and his release has not seen tangible progress as of yet.
In a recent statement by Secretary of State John Kerry with the release of the 2013 International Religious Freedom Report, he highlighted Pastor Abedini’s situation.
“In Iran, U.S. Iranian citizen Pastor Saeed Abedini remains imprisoned,” he noted. “The Iranian authorities sentenced him to eight years behind bars simply because of his religious beliefs. We will continue to call for his release and we will continue to work for it.”
Pastor Abedini was arrested and imprisoned in July 2012 during his visit to Tehran “to finalize board members for an orphanage he was building in Iran,” said the website created by Abedini’s family and supporters to raise awareness.
During his imprisonment, Abedini has been in solitary confinement. He also has been facing abusive interrogations, and infections and internal injuries as a result of the beatings that he’s received. He has been denied any kind of medical treatment.
In order to bring awareness to his situation, family and supporters of Abedini have been campaigning online with the website and #SaveSaeed, and created a petition for his release, currently signed by over 280,000 people.
Naghmeh Abedini, Pastor Abedini's wife, has also been organizing a prayer vigil to be held all over the world on September 26, 2014, in remembrance of Pastor Abedini and all those who are currently being persecuted for their faith.
